Corruption
by Scrawling Maelstrom
Summary: Logan, Kurt, and Ororo take a vacation in the Appalachians, and are suddenly swept up in a series of hate crimes... and something else they could never expect... Third chapter is up.
1. Arrival

**Editor's note:**  The first couple pieces I did were light and airy.  This one most definitely is not.  It deals with hate crimes, the KKK, and the blasphemous Identity church, and racial epithets are used, as well as some coarse language.  

**Corruption**

It was only the three of them that went on this trip.  

The fact that the Professor stayed behind surprised no one.  Though it was February break, most of the children chose to remain at the school.  He was needed there.  However, though he could not leave, it was he that suggested that other "faculty" take the time to recharge their metaphysical batteries.  

Scott stayed behind ostensibly to help run the school, despite the Professor's gentle prodding.  The man wanted nothing more than privacy, and nothing less than to be in close proximity to Logan (whether he consciously realized it or not).  Losing one's fiancée did that to a man.

That left Ororo, Kurt, and Logan to their own devices.  That, in turn, begged the question of how they were supposed to go anywhere with Kurt?  It wasn't embarrassment; it was logistics.  Thanks to Stryker, Kurt's face had been plastered over every newspaper and news broadcast as "The Oval Office Assassin".  Even if the warrant for his arrest had been rescinded at the top level, the last thing they needed was for some "patriot" to take it on himself to avenge the president.

To Logan, the solution was obvious.  Go someplace out of the public eye.  None of this "bright lights, big city" garbage.  It was time to get back to nature.  Ororo was fine with that.  As remote as the school may be, it was still too close to civilization sometimes.  It would be good to wake up and _not_ hear a leaf blower.

Kurt's only request was that they please, _please_ steer clear of Canada.  He'd had enough Canada to last a lifetime, thank you very much.

"Won't even leave the states," Logan had assured him, running his index finger along a map of the eastern United States.  "There's all of the Appalachians callin'."

"I have never been to any of these states," Kurt said, a bit warily.  "Is there anything I should know?"

"Just steer clear of the weird kid with the banjo.  You'll be fine."

Logan said Kentucky, Ororo wanted Tennessee, Kurt tossed out West Virginia because he found the name intriguing.  Since it was one of the few times Kurt suggested anything, and no one had a vested interest, West Virginia it was, though that placed them more properly in the Allegheny Mountains than the Appalachians.  They loaded up a van with backpacking gear, had Kurt climb into the back where he wouldn't be seen, and were off that day.

And now they were getting ready to hike up into the forest. Two of them were immune to the cold.  Logan, as usual, wore jeans and the lightest denim jacket.  Ororo wore something synthetic and warm just to blend in with the other hikers.  It was Kurt they worried about.  Given his reaction in Cerebro that horrid, horrid day at Alkali Lake, it was abundantly clear that he did feel the cold, and quite keenly.  But then they saw the way he insulated himself with layer over layer of wool clothing, like a man who'd dealt with snow his entire life.  

He glanced back at them from his position in the back of the van as he wrapped his strange, tridactyl feet.  "What?"

"Nothing," Logan commented.  "You just look like you're getting ready to climb K2."

Kurt smiled.  It was a little dim in the back, as the rear windows were heavily tinted, and his eyes and smile shone vividly against his dark blue skin.

"You've never been to Germany in winter, have you?" he asked

Logan shrugged.  "Not that I recall."

Kurt wound the wrappings up to just below the knee, then tied it all off.  "Let's just say I know snow.  Are you sure _you_ will be all right?  You are only wearing cotton.  That's not good.  It can't hold heat."

Logan gave a lopsided smile as he put a cigar in his mouth.  "I've got this to keep me warm."

"Just don't smoke it around me," Ororo told him.  "I'd like to breathe fresh air for once."

Kurt finished his ensemble with a scarf, neoprene face mask, mirrored ski goggles, and knit cap.  Not one inch of skin was left visible.  Once he put the mittens on, he looked like any other hiker out for a trip.  Just as long as they didn't look at his feet too closely.

_And that duster_, Logan thought.  _That's the other thing a little out of place._

Oh, well.  How else was the guy going to hide his tail?  It looked a little much to shove down his pants, especially with that big spade at the end.  The long coat would have to do.

The ground was covered with a good foot of fresh snow, and the area Logan chose was remote enough that there were no footprints to mar its beauty.  Not a beer can, not a candy wrapper, not a single sign of humanity short of the road itself.  They silently shouldered their packs and headed off the road, quietly lost in the stillness around them.  It seemed such a shame to break it.  Just the footfalls seemed invasive.  

The lovely silence only lasted until a helicopter flew by.  All stopped and looked up as the noisy bird slowly swept across their path.

"Sweep pattern," Ororo noted.  "Maybe they're looking for some lost hikers."

"I dunno about that," Logan mumbled.  "You don't see that model in civilian hands very often.  They're probably Feds."

The chopper did not deviate from its flight path, though the trio knew they had been seen.  It kept going, disappearing around another mountain.  Eventually the sound faded as well.  Whatever the pilots were looking for, it wasn't them.

"If you don't mind," Kurt said, "I think I would like to head under the trees for a bit?"

Logan and Ororo nodded as Kurt took the lead, punching through the snow with practiced ease.  The helicopter did not return.

As they got further in, the chances of accidentally being spotted, by other hikers or by air, dropped to zero.  Kurt gradually removed his scarf, his duster, and everything that covered his head.  That layer of temporary clothing, needed only until the hike itself warmed him up, eventually found its way into or over his pack.  When he pulled off his mittens, however, he hesitated longer than necessary.  Instead of briskly walking along, he stopped completely, staring down at his hands.

Logan tensed, smelling the sudden shift in scent before Kurt had even finished removing his mittens.  Kurt's stress levels had just gone through the roof.  Damn.  All that shit Stryker put him through had to come out eventually.  The memory recovery had been confined to the occasional nightmare before.  This was his first actual flashback.  Well, Charlie warned them this was going to happen sooner or later.  That was part of the reason for this trip.  Logan just hoped the poor guy had an easier time of it than he did.

Ororo noticed a split second later.  Kurt froze in place, still as the surrounding pines.  Even his tail, that strangely expressive limb that had been lazily swishing back and forth all through the hike, had stopped.  Only the very tip, the spade itself, was moving, the sides curling slowly inward until they nearly met.  Then the tail itself started to curl in.  She glanced at Logan.  Was it safe to approach?  Logan gave a long, steady exhale, narrowed his eyes, and shook his head slightly.  Uncertain.  She walked up behind Kurt, stopping out of reach of his long tail, let alone his arms.

"Kurt?" she asked softly.  "Are you all right?"

He said nothing.  She walked around his left side, still keeping her distance, until she could see his face.  He was staring blankly down at his hands.  She repeated the question.  A second later his tail snapped away from her like a whip and he straightened up with a grunt of surprise.  He blinked, shook his head to clear it.

"Kurt?" she asked, edging closer.  "Do you want to rest for a moment?"

He looked up at her quickly, a little startled.  Then he closed his eyes and shoved his mittens in a pocket.

"No," he said quietly.  "I'm sorry.  I don't want to...spoil things for you and Logan."

Logan crunched through the snow and took the lead, stopping a few feet ahead.  "Look, bub, we all knew this was gonna happen.  Hell, it's one of the reasons we came out here.  Don't worry about it.  You ain't wreckin' a thing."

They took off again, Ororo keeping pace with Kurt.  His experience had rattled him, that was plain to see.  His posture had been more carefree a minute ago.  Up until that point his arms swung from side to side and his head swiveled around to see the scenery.  Now he hunched over and gripped the shoulder straps of his pack, his focus straight ahead, his tail curling and uncurling until she feared he might tie it into a knot.  He glanced at her, then away, and mumbled something in German.

"I'm sorry?" she asked.

"There is no way but through," he repeated in English, putting some less-than-convincing strength back into his voice.

                *              *              *              *              *                              

Rasheed woke after far too long, laying on his side.  Bound, blindfolded, and gagged with duck tape, he could tell little about his surroundings.  The last thing he remembered was stopping to help some locals with car trouble.  Four men, one with a cane, all in their mid-to-late fifties, if not older, with the hood of their pickup truck open to the lightly-falling snow.  They said they'd thrown a rod. All they needed was to use his cell-phone to call a tow.  Now he was here, his head aching and spinning, and with his eyes closed he had no frame of reference to make the spinning stop. He tried to sit up, but the pain and nausea grew so much that he stopped and laid his head back down.  He didn't want to think about throwing up into a sealed mouth.

He heard voices nearby, but couldn't make out the words.  It was a call and response, almost like a religious service.  He shook with fear and fatigue.  Something inside told him he wasn't getting out of this alive.

He heard a door abruptly fling open in front of him.  Hands pulled him up by his elbows.

"O.K., raghead, getcher mud ass moving," someone grunted.

The voice was all too familiar.  It was the man to whom Rasheed had lent his cell-phone.  They ripped the tape off his face.  He cried out in pain as it tore at mustache, beard, and eyebrows.  The light blinded.  His captors wore white robes with red stripes on their sleeves.  Rasheed trembled as they dragged him into the larger hall, afraid to look up and see the hoods he was certain covered their heads.

They were going to kill him.  He was doing to die.  He would never see his wife again.  He stared at the worn floorboards, then the cheap, coil carpet, dully realizing they were the last things he would ever see.  They pulled him up to his knees, yanking his head back and forcing him to look up at a face he never expected to see in a Klan hold.

For the man in front of him, standing before a large swastika flag, was not white.  In fact, he had the handsome face of a prince of Arabia.  Soft, loving, gentle, a vision of strength and beauty in blue and gold robes.  The rough men left him there, in front of the prince, and Rasheed just sat where he was, transfixed. Was this his savior?

But as the prince knelt down and reached for him, something changed.  His placid expression was still there, his gentle, reassuring smile, but there was something in the eyes.  Something empty that spoke of death.

Rasheed started trembling.  And as the beautiful man with the empty eyes touched his shoulder, Rasheed began to scream.

TBC…..


	2. Headlong

Corruption, part 2 

Two days out.  Logan deliberately let Kurt set the pace, allowing him to take whatever turns he liked, even if they led up a rocky cliff.  All of them were beginning to feel more comfortable with the idea of talking as they walked, having grown more used to the silence.  Kurt was surprisingly open about his past.  He talked so much more easily than any of the students at the school.  Part of it could have been his age; he was a grown man, more comfortable with his image and abilities.  Part of it _was_ his past, which seemed devoid of the bitterness and neglect that characterized so many others.  Right then he was helping Ororo up an incline so steep it was more like a cliff.  Somehow the subject had gotten onto his skin color.

"You know, I'm not the only one with this coloring," he said as he pulled her onto the next level spot.  "I've seen pictures of otherwise normal people with it."

Logan lifted an eyebrow as he climbed up alongside.  "You're serious?  You've seen other people with skin that blue _besides_ Mystique?"

"Well...it's hard to explain.  When I was five, my parents took me to a doctor who showed me pictures of other blue people," Kurt told him.  "Most of them were a lighter blue, but one was as dark as me.  Other than that, they were just like everyone else.  It's a genetic condition.  I suppose it's a mutation, but nothing like what we're used to."

"I think I've heard of that," Ororo said.  "Something about a blood deficiency?"

They reached the top of the short cliff and found their path again.  As he walked, Kurt took a deep breath and looked skyward, his tone changing to that of a college instructor giving a lecture.  His German accent dropped considerably, as if repeating a speech by rote.

"Methemoglobinemia, caused by an absence of the enzyme diaphorase from red blood cells.  Treated by methylene blue."

"You sound like an expert on the subject," Logan commented.  "Damned if I'd be able to remember all that."

"If you hear it enough, it gets drilled into your memory."  His accent was back by then  "The man gave me an injection of methylene blue, which should have worked in a few minutes."

"I take it it didn't work?"

Kurt shook his head.  "He even tried a second shot, just to make sure.  Still nothing.  Of course, it had the 'other' effect."

Ororo tittered and looked away.  Kurt noticed this and grinned.

"Ah, I see you're familiar with it," he said.

"Well I ain't," Logan said.  "What does it do?"

"It turns your urine blue."

Both Logan and Ororo found it impossible to keep a straight face.

"And you just five years old," she said.  "You must have been so scared."  She tittered again and turned away.  "I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't be laughing about this."

"Oh, you don't understand little boys!  This was a badge of _honor_!" He raised a finger for emphasis.  Then he shoved his hands in his pockets with a theatrical sigh.  "I was _so_ disappointed when it wore off the next day."

"So I guess you didn't have metho-whatsis?" Logan asked.

Kurt shrugged.  "No, but it was worth a shot."

Ororo scooped up a handful of snow and flung it at Kurt, catching him in the face by surprise.  "Bad punster!  Bad!"

Kurt ducked her next shot easily and looked to Logan for support.  "Logan, a little help?"

Logan crossed his arms and watched Ororo chase him around the trees.  "Sorry, bub, you're own your own.  You deserve it for that wisecrack."

As Logan stood there, the breeze shifted.  Now his two companions were downwind and another scent caught his attention.  The hackles on the back of his neck raised as he slowly turned around.  He'd smelled death too many times to mistake it for anything else.  He swore softly and took off into the woods.  The other two called after him, all horseplay forgotten.

"Get ready to call the police, Storm," Logan called as he ran.  "I just smelled a body."

He found the corpse tossed under a tree.  Tossed, not fallen.  The poor bastard hadn't just crawled out there, bound his arms and legs, and frozen to death by accident.  Male, mid-to-late twenties, medium build.  Flannel shirt and flannel-lined jeans, so either local or here on snow holiday.  The cold had turned his skin a charcoal black, but the features said he was from the Middle-to-Far East.  Anywhere from Egypt to India.  He still had his hands and feet securely bound with duck tape, though the cold had rendered it so brittle that it would likely snap under pressure.  Logan carefully squatted down by the body and looked it over without touching.  Laceration on throat, plenty of blood staining on the shirt.  Considering the low temperatures overnight, he might have died as recently as two days ago.

_Which would match the time we saw the helicopter fly by_, Logan thought.

Ororo and Kurt stopped a few feet further back to give Logan room to work.  She had the satellite-phone out and was already speaking with the authorities, giving them GPS coordinates and landmarks.  They were in a federal nature reserve, which meant the feds were going to be involved in the case.  That, in turn, meant Kurt should be elsewhere when they arrived, just to be safe.  Logan looked back at Kurt.  The slightly-built man had leaned his pack to a tree, face turned away, eyes closed with an expression somewhere between a grimace and a frown.  Was it the body that disturbed him, or another memory?  Logan's eyes went to Kurt's tail, which had a habit of betraying his emotions.  Once again the spade had curled inwards at the sides, then the whole tail started twisting in on itself as if cramped.

For Kurt, this vision wasn't as disorienting as the first.  He managed to hold onto the idea that this was the past, that he was outside in the forest, not in a tiled room underground.  But the memory itself was worse than disturbing.  

He was staring down at a man he had just killed, the bloody knife still in his hand.  The dead man was dressed in a dark suit.  A pistol laid on the floor near his lifeless, outstretched hand.  It was cold enough in the room that wisps of steam rose from the hot blood as it ran onto the floor.  Inside Kurt was panicking.  He wanted to throw the knife away, to run, anything, even if it meant teleporting blind.  Instead he was rooted to the ground, the blood-slick knife firmly in his grasp.

"Christ, that's no good," Stryker's voice drawled behind him.  "He looks just like the goddamn Manchurian candidate.  I've seen fence posts with more emotion."

To Kurt's unmitigated horror, the sound of Stryker's voice made his body snap to attention like a soldier.  Or a trained dog.

"We got him to kill," another, unfamiliar voice offered.  "I mean, the craven little shit wouldn't even pick up the knife a few days ago.  Damn near peed himself when we aimed a gun at him the first time."

"Yeah, yeah, but this is for show," Stryker said.  Kurt could almost hear Stryker shake his head with those words.  "I want him fierce.  I want him brutal.  I want him to look like he's getting off on it.  At least get him up to Yuriko's response level."

"Yuriko's been here for months, and freak-boy here's at full disconnect already.  You want to program fake stimuli responses?  You know as well as I do that takes extra time."

"Let it take time, then.  Let it take a few months.  I want to do this right."

"O.K., then.  Let's make ourselves a demon."

Kurt shook his head quickly.  He snapped out of the flashback faster than the first time, but he was still looking down at a body with a slit throat.  By reflex, he glanced down at his hands.  No knife, thank God.

Ororo closed her satellite-phone with an audible snap.  "They're coming.  I don't like this.  It's almost like they expected my call.  Kurt, you should probably make yourself scarce."

Kurt looked down at the body.  "How much time until they get here?" he asked softly.

"About fifteen minutes."

Kurt nodded and forced himself to take a few deep breaths.  His tail was indeed cramping.  He snapped it back and forth like a bullwhip to free up the muscles.  He crouched down by the body, his knees just above the snow, and slowly withdrew his rosary from his shirt pocket.

"Then I have enough time for this," he whispered.

                *              *              *              *              *                              

Within ten minutes, the trio heard the helicopter coming around the mountain.  Kurt didn't bother disguising himself behind bulky clothing.  He teleported up into the thick trees, hidden by the combination of needles and snow.  Logan mentally cringed at the whiff of sulfur left behind, even though it dissipated quickly.  Too bad they couldn't do anything about it.  The smell was gone in a few seconds anyway, and even if it stayed around, the landing helicopter would have done the job.  

Four people hopped out of the helicopter with cameras and other evidence-gathering gear.  Three were local police, likely sheriffs and/or deputies.  The fourth screamed "fed" with every step he took.  Logan shifted his unlit cigar around to the other side of his mouth and Ororo folded her arms.  They may have to deal with the federal government, but that didn't mean they enjoyed it.  The looks on the faces of these men made Ororo, Kurt, and Logan even more edgy.  Every frown and worry line said "dear God, not another one".

The sheriff approached Logan and Ororo while the rest of the group started with pictures and measurements.  He looked like the archetypical mountain man, full, bushy beard and mustache, close-trimmed hair, heavy sheepskin jacket with badge.

"Name's Wilson," he said, shaking both their hands in turn.  "I'm real sorry to have your trip ruined like this."

"Afternoon, Sheriff Wilson," Logan said.  "Looks like this has happened before?"

Wilson nodded grimly.  "Third one this week.  Surprised you didn't know.  The radio's been buzzing about it all over West Virginia.  When it works."

" 'When it works'?" Ororo asked.

"Yeah, we've been having atmospheric troubles.  Cell-phones and shortwave's been cutting out on us.  That and a batch of bad batteries, I guess.  Or maybe gremlins.  Makes coordinating this manhunt absolute hell.  It's just luck we got your call."

"We came in from out of town," Logan said.  "And I try to avoid the news.  Too depressing."

Wilson gave both of them an odd look.  "That explains why you're brave enough to camp out here.  All the bodies have been within ten miles of the North edge of the park."

Ororo hugged her arms a bit closer.  No wonder there was so little competition.  

"Serial killer?" she asked quietly.

The federal agent stepped up to the trio.

"I don't think so," he said.  "Not in the classic sense, anyway.  Riley Barnes, FBI."  He shook their hands.  "Serial killers tend to stick to one race.  So far the bodies we've found include one Asian, one African-American, and now one East Indian."

Ororo rubbed her forehead.  "Hate crimes."

Agent Riley nodded.  "It's sure starting to look that way.  The perps are bold enough to leave all the ID on their victims."  He gave Ororo and Logan the same look as Wilson had.  "You two should be careful out here.  There's some old Klansmen whack-jobs living in these hills.  I don't think they'd take kindly to a mixed couple such as yourselves, no matter your relationship."

"The things maps don't tell you," Logan grumbled, lighting his cigar.

Riley pulled out a pad and pen, all business.  "When did you say you came into the park?"

Kurt could hear everything they said down below.  The interview went on for a good half-hour.  The FBI agent was polite, but lacked the warmth of Sheriff Wilson.  Of course, Kurt's presence was never mentioned, and Logan and Ororo gave false names and addresses.  Other than that, they were completely truthful.  The authorities were keeping the identity of the dead man quiet, but they acted as if they knew it already.  Perhaps he had been missing for a while.  A couple of times the officers looked Kurt's way.  One even seemed to look straight at him.  Kurt stayed where he was, motionless, and the policeman's gaze swept by.  Even in the circus, his own friends couldn't see him in the shadows.  Why should here be any different?

Finally, Logan and Ororo shouldered their packs.  They shook hands with Sheriff Wilson and Agent Barnes, and were thanked for their assistance.  His friends moved off, right by Kurt's spot, and strode farther into the woods.  Kurt took his sighting and teleported a few hundred yards ahead of them, then waited behind a tree as they approached.

"Are we leaving, or are we finding the fiends responsible for this?" he asked as they drew near.

"I've got their scents," Logan growled.  "They were all over that poor guy.  I'm all for finding them."

"As am I," Ororo added, her tone as harsh as the winter wind itself.

Kurt veered North, splitting off from the other two.

"Kurt?  Where are you going?" Ororo asked.

Kurt stopped and turned around.  "The closest edge of the park is this way, and that is where the bodies have been found.  I thought it would be a good place to start.  Am I wrong?"

Logan took a long draw off of his cigar before replying.  "Nope.  It makes as much sense to start there as anywhere else."

                *              *              *              *              *                              

The evening of the next day, Ororo took a few minutes to call the back to the mansion as Logan and Kurt made camp.  She stood a ways off, behind one of the omnipresent trees for privacy.  She did not use the satellite-phone.  It was too easy to intercept.  This was one of their special radios.

The professor answered this time.  "Hello?"

"Hello, Professor, it's me," she said.  "Just checking in."

"Storm!  It's good to hear from you."  He was cheerful, but a bit wary.  "Have you been keeping up with the news?"

"About the bodies dropping here like flies?" she asked back.  "We found one ourselves yesterday.  Logan got some good scents off of the body, and we're hoping to pick up a trail sometime tomorrow."

"Then you know to be cautious.  Cerebro hasn't found any other mutants in the surrounding area, but that's hardly reassuring.  I don't want you falling to a sniper rifle."

"Professor, I hate to change the subject, but how is Scott doing?  Has he been having flashbacks over the last week?"

Xavier hesitated, but only for an instant.  "He's had one.  What about Kurt?"

"Logan says five, but I've only seen four.  He also seems to be getting distant, but that could just be from these murders."

She looked back around the tree as she spoke.  Kurt was in one of the trees, tying most of their food up to deter nocturnal visitors.  Logan made quick work of pitching their pup tents, which opened up so quickly he called them "mushrooms".

"I see," Xavier replied.  "How much stress do these flashbacks seem to be putting him under?"

"Hard to tell.  The memories seem to be getting more intense, but he's using prayer as a kind of meditation."

"Does there seem to be any...hidden programming from Stryker's manipulations?  He was held at Alkali Lake for quite some time."

"No, I don't think so.  I think he's just on edge from these murders.  I know I am."

Logan put their small white gas stove on the ground as he lit it.  They were about to make dinner.  He looked Ororo's way and whistled through his teeth.

"That must be Logan," Xavier commented.

She smiled a bit.  "My turn to rehydrate dinner tonight."

"Keep Kurt in your sights, Storm.  If one of those memories comes at a bad time, he could hurt himself in your current environment."

She eyed the surrounding cliffs, which Kurt seemed very fond of climbing.  "I understand, Professor.  I'll talk with you later."

She closed up the radio and strode back to the men.  The food packs were waiting near the tiny stove, and Logan had just put a small pot of snow over the flame to melt.  Ororo looked around for Kurt and almost didn't see him, still up in the tree.  They had half an hour before sunset, and Kurt was nearly impossible to find in the evening shadows.  He wasn't looking their way.  Instead, he looked down the hill, at the path they would be taking tomorrow.  A path that lead down their hill, up another, and would eventually take them out of the park.  He didn't sit on the branch like a "normal" man, letting his legs dangle over the side.  He crouched on it, perfectly balanced, toes curling over the edge like talons, hands clasped loosely across his knees.  Ororo felt a few sympathy pains as she watched his posture.  That would have her aching in under a minute, but he seemed perfectly comfortable.

"Dinner in fifteen," she called to him.

Kurt did not reply.  He knew it must have seemed rude of him to do so, but for once, he just didn't feel like talking.  Something was bothering him beyond the unease of trailing a butcher, or set of butchers.  Something beyond the visions that had finally wound their way out of his subconscious.  He felt edgy, nervous, too alert.  His tail swished back and forth with agitation.  

Logan caught Kurt's abrupt scent shift.  Suddenly he radiated rage coupled with the adrenalin of a barely-suppressed fight-or-flight reflex, far worse than any previous flashback.  As Logan sprang up and called Kurt's name, the blue-skinned acrobat suddenly launched himself from the branch like a leaping wildcat and tore off down the hill, galloping on all fours.

Logan took off after him.  Ororo had to take the time to clamber to her feet and immediately fell behind.

_Can't fly, here_, she reminded herself.  _Too many FBI men.  Can't fly here.  Got to keep to the ground.  Logan can get him.  Just keep to the ground._

Logan almost caught up with Kurt.  He was just out of reach of that tail, which was sticking out and up as a rudder.  But then Kurt leapt on a downed tree and sprang off.  Logan swore loudly and shouted for Kurt to stop.  The one thing in his favor was that Kurt seemed to have forgotten he could teleport.

As Ororo got halfway down the hill, Kurt was already halfway up the next, springing from boulder to tree to boulder again, keeping the focused look of that wildcat on a chase.  _Damn it!_  Forget the FBI; she had to be able to catch Kurt before the sun fell completely.  She leapt into the air as a strong wind whipped around her.

The pressure shift and sudden gust behind him told Logan Storm was airborne.  A risky move, considering the government presence, but it looked like it would be a necessary one.  Kurt was too fast for her to catch otherwise.  What the hell set him off?  Was it all the white around here?  Too much like the White House, perhaps?  Or maybe it was the body yesterday?  As Logan neared the crest of the hill, he made a jump to catch Kurt before he launched himself over the uncertain edge.  

Just his luck: Kurt took that time to teleport.  As Storm flew above them, Logan got a faceful of brimstone, but no Kurt.  Then Logan looked over the crest of the hill.

Time froze.  Several hundred feet down below stood a cluster of men, facing inwards.  Some had shotguns, one used a cane.  Logan couldn't tell what they were around.  Further behind them was very tall male, unarmed, and not even remotely dressed for the weather.  He stood there, a graceful, Nordic man in the prime of life, dressed in a simple white robe, long blond tresses swaying gently in the breeze.  Full facial hair, close cut with a glossy sheen.  A face so gentle, almost feminine _despite_ the beard, it took Logan's breath away.

The tall man looked up at Logan, transfixed him with his beautiful blue eyes, and suddenly found Nightcrawler in his face.

With a puff of blue smoke and a terrible, fearsome howl, Nightcrawler slammed into the stranger full force.  Explosion of snow.  Startled cries from the other men. Mixed in the obscenities someone said "devil". Rifles raised.  Time unfroze.  Logan's lips peeled back in a snarl and his claws snapped out.  Now he caught the scents.  Now he knew who the rest of them were.  He raced down the hill.

Storm couldn't believe her eyes.  This wasn't the same gentle, self-effacing Kurt she had grown to know over the months.  This was a violent demon, right down to the snarling, bared fangs.  She suddenly understood how President McKenna must have felt.  The sheer, brutal ferocity of Nightcrawler's attack left her speechless.  She was so shocked that she almost didn't see one of the men down below aim his shotgun up at her.  However, she head the word "nigger" clearly enough.  She snapped her focus down at the same time she spun to the right, and felt a load of buckshot stream by her.

The man below her spat curses as he pumped round after round into the air.  "Goddamn... fucking... nigger... mutie...."

The other men pumped rounds into Logan's chest.  A few shells ripped holes in his clothing.  None did anything to seriously slow him down.

The tall man stood up, livid and holding Nightcrawler by his jacket.  With an implosion of air, Nightcrawler teleported out of the jacket and onto his back.  The tall man spun and hit with blinding speed, backhanding Nightcrawler in the face and sending him to the ground.  As the tall one made contact, Logan caught of flash of white fangs.  

_Jesus! _he thought_.  Kurt actually bit him!_

The tall one cried out in pain.  Storm thought she was disturbed by Kurt's animalistic howl.  The sound that issued from the tall one's lips defied all description.  It echoed from every tree, shaking hills and stones.  It was a sound of fear and pain and malice.  The tall one's face twisted with such rage that his beautiful facade turned into a hideous mask of loathing.  In one smooth motion, he grabbed the front of Nightcrawler's shirt and slammed him down with both arms.  Too late Storm realized they were standing over a frozen river.  Ice shattered underneath and water went everywhere.  The last thing she saw of Kurt was the spade of his tail, flying up with the force of the blow, then disappearing under the crushed, floating white.  The tall one was kneeling, holding Kurt down under the water, his arms in the freezing slush to his elbows, a sadistic grin on his lips.

Logan had reached one of the armed men.  With one swipe of his claws, he eliminated the rifle.  With another, he sliced open his target's chest.  In terror, the others forgot about shooting.  They held their weapons up in a warding action, as if to parry Logan's claws.

"Lord, save us!" one shouted.

The tall man snarled down at the river, momentarily surprised, then looked back.  Logan sliced another rifle in half.  An electric blue pulse radiated out from the tall one, so fast it was almost missed.  Then Logan was alone on the ground, along with the chaotic footprints, metal bits, and a wide fan of blood.  That, and one more thing.  The men had been clustered around another duck-taped victim.  This one was still alive.

Logan didn't care.  All he had eyes for was the broken, slushy ice cover of the hidden river.  Nightcrawler had not resurfaced.

"KURT!" Logan screamed as he dove headlong into the water.

The water was so cold it hit Logan like semi.  For the first few seconds, he couldn't have closed his eyes even if he wanted to.  Anyone else would have lost most, if not all, of his air the second he hit the water.  The flow of the river pulled him downstream at a slower rate than he would have suspected, but still plenty fast enough to leave the safety of the opening far behind.  He ignored both pain and shocking cold as he swam with the current, hoping to catch up with his friend.  That assumed he hadn't disappeared along with the rest of the men.  He couldn't be sure the tall one didn't take Kurt with him.

Storm landed by the remaining victim as Logan dove under the ice.  She checked the man's vital signs.  He was beaten, perhaps had a concussion, but his pulse was steady.  As she freed the man's limbs, she watched the snow for Logan's re-entry.  Maybe Kurt had managed to teleport out of his enemy's grasp.  Maybe he was in the trees somewhere, shivering.  And maybe he was so deep in shock that he lost all sense of direction and teleported into the ground instead.

_Don't think that_, she thought.  _He's got to be down there.  Logan will get him, or he'll pop up a few feet over the riverbed.  Or he's been captured.  He hasn't drowned._

Interminable seconds ticked by.  Storm wrapped her jacket around the unconscious man and withdrew her X-men radio from her pocket.  All she felt was the breeze through the pines.  No pressure changes.  No Logan.  No Kurt.  Then, ten or fifteen yards farther upstream, Logan's distinctive metal claws slashed up through the thick, snow-camouflaged ice.  Logan burst out an instant later with a shocked gasp and cry.  Storm ran up beside him and realized that he was standing up in the river, shivering.

"H-he ain't there," Logan said.  He clenched his teeth to stop the chattering.  "Didn't drown.  Water's too shallow.  Woulda hung up here.  Woulda seen 'im."

"Was he taken along with the rest of the men?" she asked.

Logan shook his head.  "Don't think so.  Tasted sulfur.  He teleported on his own.  Had to."

He staggered out of the water, then fell to his knees in the snow, arms wrapped tightly around his chest.  Suddenly he ripped off his shirt and jacket.

"Dammit!" he shouted.  "I can't track him when he t-ports!"

Ororo activated her radio.  The Professor had tracked Kurt before.  He could do it again.  Unfortunately, the radio was silent as death itself.  She hit it against her palm twice.  Nothing.  Didn't the tall man let of some kind of blue pulse before he disappeared?  A localized EMP?  She recalled Sheriff Wilson's offhanded comment.

_We've been having atmospheric troubles.  Cell-phones and shortwave's been cutting out on us.  That and a batch of bad batteries, I guess.  Or maybe gremlins._

"_Please_ tell me they're out of range," she murmured. 

She flew back to camp and tore through their tents, pulling out radios and satellite-phones.  Every piece of electronics she found was dead.  She flew back with all three of their packs.  By then Logan had stripped completely out of his sopping clothes and was checking their new "friend" over.  Despite the fact Logan was still wet, he wasn't shivering so badly anymore.  His healing factor must have kicked in.  He looked up as Ororo landed.

"Everything electronic is dead, right down to the digital watch," she told him.  "It's not atmospheric.  Whoever this is, he's been giving off heavy electromagnetic pulses when he teleports.  That's what's been messing up the airwaves."

Logan pulled his spare set of clothes and shoes from his pack with reckless abandon.  As he dressed, Ororo picked up the first aid kit from what he flung out of the pack and unrolled one of the foil blankets.  She laid it on the ground and put their new responsibility on it.  He was a relatively short man, mid-to-late twenties, Asian.  His muscle tone said he was in good shape, probably worked out regularly.  She searched for a wallet and found one.  Toshiro Hidoshi, age twenty-seven.  Driver's license said West Virginia, and it was printed in this county.  He was a local, not some poor tourist in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Logan finished dressing and looked over her shoulder at the identification in her hand.

"Three guesses as to who these rednecks were, and the first two don't count," he snarled.

"We found the killers, didn't we?" she asked.

"Yup.  Found 'em in mid-kill."  He looked down to Toshiro.  "He can't live that far from here.  There's a lot of homes in these hills.  If the EMP didn't spread too far, we should be able to use one of their phones to call the professor, and he can use Cerebro to find Kurt."

"Kurt could be dead by then!" she objected.  "Maybe you can handle that kind of cold, but he can't!  He could be going into shock by now!  He won't survive the night without shelter!"

"You got a better idea, babe?" he snapped.  "His teleport range is measured in miles!  That gives us a good twenty miles of ground to cover, it's almost sundown, and we don't know which way he went!"

"If I take to the air, I can cover the distance in minutes!"

"And how're you going to fly through dense forest?"  He stopped and forced himself to calm down.  He wrapped Toshiro in the blanket.  "All right.  You take to the air, and I'll find this guy's house.  I find anything, I'll shoot off a flare.  You find Kurt--"

"You'll know it if I do," she interrupted.  "I'm not feeling subtle today."

She lifted into the air in a vortex of fine powder, a backpack in each hand, her eyes as white as the surrounding snow.  Logan watched her go, then hunted through his pack for the map.

"I hope you don't live too far away, bub," he mumbled.  "Or else this is going to be one hell of a march."

TBC….


	3. Lost

**Editor's Note:**  Reviews within a few days!  :D  Thank you very much, all.

A very talented artist by the name of BlueFooted has drawn an illustration for this chapter of the story.  How talented?  This one won first place in X-Day 2003.  Though I can't exactly cut and paste it into this, I can give you the link at the end of the text.  Take a look at it: she really captured the mood.  (I'd like to put it in the first part of the story, up front, but everytime I try, it seems to screw up the uploading and eliminate text.  And unless I add spaces between the dots, slashes, and whatnot, it won't show up at all…. :p)

**Corruption, part 3**

Fred Martin mourned the death of brother Joseph, along with the rest of his Klan brethren and sistren.  Joseph was the first martyr to fall in this holy battle, sliced open by the animal's claws.  The angel had returned them to the inner sanctum of the Jesus Christ of Christ Identity church, where he had first revealed himself.  Now that same angel, his beautiful face strained with sorrow, placed his hands over Joseph's face and closed his dead eyes.  The angel's hand still let off tendrils of black smoke from where the unholy fiend had left his foul bite.

"Knowing the price, you still follow His holy will," the angel said, addressing the small group as a whole.  "You will be rewarded in Heaven when the cleansing is done."

Fred nodded, his eyes burning but refusing to cry.  He rested heavily on his cane.  He wouldn't show weakness.  Joseph wouldn't want them to break down.  They weren't snot-nosed Hammerskins or Neo-Nazis without a lick of sense.  They were the old guard, the veterans of this race war.  They knew to plan, not go off half-cocked.  Joseph would want them strong.  He'd want vengeance.

The angel winced and held his wrist.  A pattern of fine black lines smoked on the back of his hand.

"The demon is strong," he hissed with pain.  "Its touch is anathema.  It still lives."

Sister Clara, the only woman of their group, took a step forward and bent to one knee.  "Tell us where it is, my Lord.  Tell us so that we may slay it in your holy name."

"It will find no shelter among those who fear God. It will perish out in this world, without the sulfurous pits to sustain it.  You smelled the rank stench of evil when it appeared."

Everyone nodded.

"And yet.…"  The angel paused, thinking.  "There is one that could aid it.  One traitor to the race, who lives up in the mountain. It will sense her kindred evil, and it will go there."

The angel looked directly at Fred as he spoke.  Fred's jaw clenched, and the others eyed him warily.  Yes, they all knew of whom the holy one spoke.  Her part of the family had been a thorn in Fred's side for years, to say nothing of a source of embarrassment and shame.  If only he could do something about it.

The angel's gaze softened and he continued, "But you cannot make it up the mountain with your knee so injured, Brother Martin.  Your heart desires to do good, even if your body cannot."

Fred bowed his head and silently cursed his injured knee.  Damn Toshiro for breaking it.  He hoped the little shit would die of his injuries, even if they'd been prevented from finishing the job.  

The angel turned to Clara, who still waited on his word.  He touched her forehead with a blessing, his fingertips light and smooth.

"Go, my child.  You are the only one who knows the mountain as well as Martin himself.  The whore of Babylon must not make contact with the demon.  The Lord has decreed that they both must die."

            *          *          *          *          *                      

Kurt's last coherent memory was that of building anger.  Images of racing down one hill and up another.  The white snow mingled with white hallways.  He slammed into something, bore it to the ground.  There were gunshots.  And suddenly he was in horrendous, biting, agonizing cold with all the air shocked from his lungs.  Someone was holding him underwater.

In a panic, he teleported as far as he could.  He aimed for over two hundred feet up in the air, in the hopes of avoiding any trees, praying that he wouldn't materialize in a mountainside.  He was luckier than he deserved.  The next thing he knew he was tumbling down a snowy embankment and slamming into a tree.  More snow fell on him.  He sprang up, fell to the side, then hauled himself to all fours, shivering too badly to walk.  He had no idea where he was.

_Soaked to the skin, cold as ice, lost, and night coming in minutes_, Kurt thought.  _I'm in trouble_.

It took a conscious effort on his part to stop shivering.  The teleport left him more winded than he would have thought possible.  It took fifteen seconds for him to stand.

_Dear, merciful God, what have I done?_ he thought.  _What came over me?_

It was all a fog.  All he could clearly remember was rage.  Not the victim's face, not the fight itself.  Just blind, uncontainable rage.  If the water hadn't shocked him to his senses, he might still have been fighting.  Someone else could even now be lying dead somewhere, killed by Kurt's hands.  Is this how Logan felt, once the rage was gone?  Was it Logan who held him underwater, in an attempt to snap him out of it?

The sun was on the other side of the mountain.  The sky's hue said actual sunset was only minutes away.  Kurt could see in the dark without trouble, but that was the least of his concerns.  How cold was it supposed to get tonight?  Freezing level?  Twenties?  Teens?  His clothing was useless.  Even his water repellant leg-wrapping was soaked clear through.  He had no idea where base camp was, and no way to start a fire.  His best chance was to get somewhere in the open and hope Ororo could spot him from the air.  He started to walk.

How long he walked, he wasn't certain.  He couldn't feel his feet or his hands.  Twice shivering fits forced him to stop.  His head started to spin.  Balance was harder and harder, and he caught himself grumbling about his lack of coordination.  Stumbles, mumbles, and grumbles; the classic signs of hypothermia.  He shook his head and laughed nervously.  You, Herr Wagner, are in very, _very_ deep trouble.  He kept walking.  After all, he had nothing better up his sleeve.

Some time later he looked up, trying to find stars for orientation.  Just his luck; it was overcast.  Why didn't he notice that before?  Oh, well, it wouldn't make a difference, anyway.  He really had no idea where he was going.  The walk had warmed him up, and he didn't feel the cold anymore.  His shirt was chafing him, though.  Annoyed, he stopped and tried to remove it.  His arms felt clumsy, and he couldn't feel the cloth under his fingers.  The whole process took longer than he thought it should. Finally he managed to pull the long-sleeved flannel over his head and off his arms.  He was about to drop it when he remembered what was in the left pocket.  Can't get rid of that.  He pulled the rosary out, wrapped it around his wrist, tossed the shirt over his shoulder, and kept moving, completely forgetting his plan to stop in the middle of the clearing and wait for help.  Moments later he was under the trees again.

Time passed.  Then he had another shivering fit, and this one was beyond his control.  He fell to the ground as the shivering intensified.  When the fit passed, he was curled up in a ball in the snow, his tail around his chest, and he was so very, very tired.  Then another shivering fit, not as long as the first, left him strangely warm and at peace.  He dimly realized what was happening, just enough to try and fight off the sleepy feeling that washed over him.  He forced his eyes to stay open.  If he closed them, he was lost.  He couldn't feel the rosary beads under his fingers, but he could hear them softly clacking against each other.  He started to pray, his words slurring together.  Either it would keep him alive, or it would help him through death.

A spotlight shone on him.  He blinked and looked around.  A shadow with a rifle fell between him and the light. 

A female voice gasped, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!"

She instantly raised the rifle and aimed it at Kurt.  Kurt closed his eyes.  He didn't need to see the end for himself.  The shot pounded his eardrums, forcing his eyes open again.  Someone else spat a curse, farther behind him, and from that same spot another shot rang out.

"God damn you, Clara, get off my land!" the woman just in front of him screamed.

It slowly dawned on Kurt that the woman wasn't aiming _at_ him.  She was aiming just beyond him.  He forced his head to turn and look that direction.  Another female was aiming at either Kurt or the woman in the spotlight.  He couldn't be sure, and he couldn't do much about it.  The spotlit woman shot first, and the second one fell back, blood splattering on the tree beside her.  As the first one chambered another round, the second dropped her weapon and took off into the darkened woods, clutching her bloody right shoulder.  The first one shot again.

"Raise a gun agin' me and mine?" she screamed after the fleeing opponent.  "Lord have mercy, I'll snap that sixth commandment like a twig!"

Her voice was shaking.  She chambered another round, but did not fire.  After a moment she bolted forward, grabbed the fallen rifle, and floundered back through the snow.  As she did so, Kurt could get a halfway decent look at her.  She wore a bulky coat that did nothing to hide her girth.  She was a big woman.

_No_, Kurt mused sleepily.  _Not fat.  Face is wrong.  Pregnant._

Another shivering spasm.  He felt his teeth chatter, but this time he didn't have the strength to clench them.  Soon he tasted blood.

Beth hauled her "prize" rifle back as fast as she could.  When she heard someone stomping around outside, she ran out, praying it was Toshi, but fearing something worse.  Thank God she grabbed the shotgun on the way, or else Clara might have finished her.  And now she was looking down at someone who was so cold he was actually blue.  He was grimacing with the cold, teeth chattering.  She gasped in shock as she saw how unnaturally sharp those teeth were.  What did he do, file them to points?  And then she saw the tail he had wrapped around his chest, the pointed ears, the strange two-fingered hands, the scars....

_Oh my God_, she thought.  _This is the Oval Office Assassin!_

She dropped Clara's rifle and gripped her own shotgun with both hands as the...being in front of her trembled with cold.

_No, no, wait.  The warrant was rescinded.  They did that months ago.  The President let him go.  He ain't considered a criminal no more._

Was Clara after her or him?  Could be either.  It didn't matter, though.  The manhunt was called off, the "assassin" somehow cleared.  Shooting him was the same as shooting an innocent man; just plain murder.

_Get ahold of yourself, Beth_, she thought.  _The man's gonna die out here.  He's just another hiker.  Treat him like another lost hiker._

She put down her weapon and bent over the man.  "Sir!  Can you hear me?  What's your name?  Talk to me!  Stay with me!"

The last shiver didn't bother him as much as the others.  The spasms were growing weaker.  The woman was shouting at him, something about his name.

"Khh....Kurt...," he mumbled.

She was moving him, dragging him through the snow, out of the light, through dark, and into another light.  He looked around through eyes half-lidded with exhaustion.  He was inside.

"You stay with me, Kurt," the woman was telling him as she dragged him across the floor.  "Don't you pass out on me, all right?"

"Mommy?  Mommy, he gots a _tail_, mommy."

Kurt looked to his right at a little girl.  She was staring at him.  Mesmerized or in terror, he couldn't tell.  It was so hard to think right now, and he didn't really want to bother.

"I know he gots a tail, honey," the woman said.  "Mommy needs you to help her.  Mommy needs you to get the hot water bottles, all right?"

"Is he a devil, mommy?"

"No sweetie, he ain't a devil.  You go get those bottles, Amber.  Now!"

The little girl ran off, and the woman was holding Kurt's face in her hands, forcing him to look up at her.

"Kurt, my name's Beth.  We're gonna warm you up, all right?  We're gonna take off those wet clothes and warm you up.  I don't want you to do nothin'.  Just let me move your arms and legs, and you hold on.  Don't you pass out, all right?  You understand me?"

"Ja...," he murmured.

She slowly uncurled his arms, then his legs, talking to him all the while. When she got to his tail, curled around his stomach and lower ribs, she hesitated, then must have decided it wasn't worth the effort.  He vaguely felt the towel she rubbed over his skin.  She sounded like a nurse.  She was too level-headed for anything else. 

The little girl ran back.  She held several flaccid rubber containers against her chest with both arms, then dropped them all in a heap on the floor.  Beth grabbed a few, stood up, and went out of Kurt's field of vision, still talking, though he couldn't make out the words.  The little girl was staring at him, but it was with curiosity, not fear.

Wood under him, walls around him, ceiling overhead.  Nurse nearby.  He was safe.  He closed his eyes.  

And was lost.

Beth was filling the water bottles from the sink when Amber started screaming.

"Mommy!  Mommy!  He ain't breathing!  He stopped breathing!"

Beth slammed off the faucet and dropped the half-filled bottle in the sink, warm water splashing everywhere.  She bolted into the front room, where the man laid on the floor, eyes closed.  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was reciting the cruelest rule of cold rescue; that the most critical time was not before, but after.  Once they felt safe, they relaxed, letting go of whatever strength of will that kept them alive.  Kurt was safe, and Kurt was laying, motionless, on the floor.  She slid to her knees on the hardwood floor and put her ear to his lips, watching his chest.  The skin was so cold and clammy that it was like sticking her face against snow bank.  She tried to find a pulse.  She tried for a full minute, on the chance that he'd just gone into a hypo-metabolic state.  Nothing.  Not only had he stopped breathing, his heart had stopped as well.

She rocked back on her heels, put the heels of her palms over his chest, and started pumping.  One, two, three, four, five...  She went to fifteen, then tilted his head back and was about to go further when she saw that his lips were bloody.  God help her, was he carrying any blood-borne disease?  She hesitated, then pinched his nose shut, inhaled deeply, and breathed for both of them, trying to ignore the tinge of blood in his mouth.

After a second breath, she went back to pumping.  

"Come on, Kurt!" she shouted.  "Don't do this to me!"

Fifteen compressions, two breaths.

"Breathe, dammit!"

Fifteen compressions, two breaths.

"BREATHE!"

TBC….

http:// www. angelfire. com/ art2/ bluefooted/ images/ corr2. jpg


	4. Found

Corruption, part 4 

Storm did all she could to help in her search.  She called in cloud cover, both to keep her from being seen and to keep the temperatures up.  She skimmed over the treetops, calling Kurt's name.  At first she had high hopes, but as the sun set, and the night grew deeper, she felt the first stirrings of despair.  Logan was right.  There was no way to find Nightcrawler in such deep shadow.  The first time they met him in the church, he had been right above them, yet utterly invisible until he fell into the light.  There was no light here, and her flashlight was useless on this kind of a search.  It would only serve to desensitize the rest of her vision.  She was willing to go all night, but would he last that long?  He only hope was finding any trail he left in the snow.

Then, hours into her search, she got a break.  She saw a shirt discarded in a meadow, along with gouged lines in the snow; dragged footprints.  The shirt was indeed Kurt's, stiff and heavy with ice as she picked it up.  A quick feel of the two pockets told her his rosary was missing.  He must have taken it with him, which meant he was still coherent on some level.  It was the best sign she'd seen.  She dropped her own pack and shouldered Kurt's instead, then took off running through forest too dense to allow flight.  The trail he'd left weaved back and forth, like a drunkard's path.  He wasn't in good shape.  He couldn't have gotten far.  Ahead of her, somewhere, she heard several gunshots.  She ran faster, using Kurt's path as best she could.

_Please tell me he didn't get shot, please tell me he didn't get shot_, she prayed.

The trail ended several minutes later in a depression, where Kurt had no doubt fallen.  To her relief, there was no blood.  From there Kurt had been dragged.  She followed the trench in the snow around the side of a hillock, where it seemed to end at a rocky wall.  What in...?  There's no way he could have teleported in his condition!  Ororo was sure of it!  There had to be an entry here, somewhere.

She took out her flashlight for the first time that night and searched the area.  There was indeed a door in front of her, made to blend into the rock face.  She flung the unlocked door open.  Light stabbed out, and she heard a startled gasp in front of her.  A split-second later she adjusted to the brightness, and saw Kurt laying on the floor just a few feet away from her, bare-chested, a blanket hastily thrown over his waist and legs.  A startled, exhausted, pregnant woman knelt between compressions over his chest.

Ororo didn't even bother closing the door behind her.  She shucked the pack, fell to her knees, and took over chest compression immediately. Instead of the dark indigo, Kurt's skin was a blotchy, pale, violet-blue.  His chest was merely tepid under her fingers, where the woman's hands had been, but ice cold elsewhere.  The woman beside her moved back, giving Ororo room to work.

"How long has he been this way?" Ororo asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

" 'Bout five minutes," the woman answered, panting.  "Friend of yours?"

Ororo stopped, and the other woman breathed twice for Kurt.  Ororo listened at Kurt's chest and felt sick inside.  Five minutes of this, and his heart was still.  She didn't have the equipment to deal with severe hypothermia in her pack, and this good Samaritan certainly didn't, either.

"We need a defibrillator," Storm whispered.  

"I don't got one," the woman said.  "If I had, I would've used it."

Storm closed her eyes.  Thunder rumbled very close by.  The woman looked out the door, surprised, and then looked at Storm.  Storm had reopened her eyes, and the were a milky white.

"You must trust me," she said softly, still keeping up the chest compression.  "Step away."

Thunder rumbled again, even closer.  In fact, right overhead.  The woman fearfully crawled away, eyeing the door, as an electric charge started to lift Storm's hair.

_If I am wrong_, Storm thought, _Kurt will die.  If I am weak, Kurt will die.  If I cannot precisely channel the bolt, Kurt will die.  And if I do nothing, Kurt will die._

A lightning bolt shot in through the door, through Storm, and into Kurt's chest.  His entire body seized, back arching, limbs twitching.  His damp hair began to steam.  He fell back to the floor.  Storm's back was smoking, her arms trembling.  She listened for a heartbeat.  Nothing.  She summoned up her reserves and placed her hands over the entirety of Kurt's chest instead of just his sternum.  Another crack, a whiff of ozone.  Part of this bolt went a little wild, scorching the paneling a few inches from the good Samaritan's ear.  She let out a started scream.

Kurt convulsed again.  Then he coughed.  His eyelids fluttered once, though they did not lift.  Ororo tentatively removed her hands and watched with immeasurable relief as Kurt's chest finally rose and fell on its own.  She felt for a pulse.  Slow, but there.  She looked back at the good Samaritan, who was holding her little girl close and staring at both she and Kurt.

"You gonna bring any more lighting in here?" she asked softly.

Ororo's eyes changed from white to blue.  "No."

The woman swallowed once, then gracelessly clambered to her feet using any piece of furniture within reach.  She was at least six months pregnant, perhaps seven or eight.  

"All right," she said, her voice growing stronger.  "I'm gonna try to fill up those water bottles again.  We gotta warm up his chest.  Don't bother none with the limbs right now."  She moved into another room, probably the kitchen.  "And there's a cot in the closet.  And blankets."

"I have a reflector blanket," Storm told her.  "It will do better.  And thank you for saving Kurt's life."

She heard the water running in the next room.  The woman's voice drifted back.  "After we get him stable, I got a _awful_ lot of questions for you."

Ororo nodded as she went back for her pack.  "I can just imagine."

                *              *              *              *              *                              

It wasn't that Kurt wasn't used to churches.  And the fact that he was alone, on his knees in the front pew, was also normal.  Church was supposed to be about community, he knew, but life was just better for everyone involved if he worshipped alone.  It was a bit odd that he couldn't move his jaw, so he mumbled his prayers through clenched teeth.  Surely God wouldn't mind.

The strange thing was that Ororo was beside him, watching him as he prayed, her hand on the back of his head.  Even stranger, the priest in front of them was female.  She held the communion cup in one hand and touched him on the forehead.  Her touch freed his clenched jaw.

"Little sips, honey," the priest said.  "Come one, now."

He looked up and saw Rogue in the priestly robes.  Rogue as a _priest_?  She put the chalice to his lips.  It wasn't wine; it was some sort of warm, sweet punch.  He opened his eyes, though he didn't remember closing them, and looked up at someone entirely different.  She was a grown woman, not Rogue by a longshot.  Only the heavy southern twang was the same.  She was pressing a shotglass to his lips, half-filled with red sweet liquid.  By reflex, he finished the two swallows that were left.  He tried to move, but his body felt like lead, and he was wrapped in blankets besides, pinning his arms.  He turned his head and looked directly at Ororo, sitting beside him.

"Kurt?" she asked cautiously.  "Are you awake for good?  Can you see me?"

"Yes," he mumbled.

"What's my name?"

"Ororo."

"Count back from 100 by sevens."

"You want me...to do math?"

"Humor me."

"100...93...86...79...."

She smiled with relief.  "Welcome back from the dead, Kurt."

He sighed and closed his eyes.

"Kurt, you still awake?" Ororo asked, concerned once more.

"Yes," Kurt breathed.  "I'm awake.  I'm just tired."

After a pause, she spoke again.  "I'm going to take your temperature.  This might tickle your ear."

It did tickle, a bit.  He obediently kept his head still while the time counted down.

"Hypothermia?" he asked softly.

"The worst I've ever seen," Ororo told him.  A beep sounded in Kurt's ear, and the irritation was removed.  "Well, you're up to 95 degrees."

He opened his eyes again in surprise.  "_Up to?_  What was I before?"

"Room temperature."

A shiver ran through his body.  Soon he was shaking again.  It was not a pleasant sensation.  He grimaced.

"Oh-oh," the stranger said.  "Better cinch it up again."

Before his teeth could start chattering, he felt a strap around his head snap tight.  His jaw muscles jerked and spasmed, but with the jaw itself cinched closed, there was no chance of his sharp teeth cutting his lips open.  From the stinging he felt as he grimaced, that had already happened once.

"Danke," he said through clenched teeth.

The trembling passed in a few seconds, and they loosened the strap so he could talk freely once more.

"You are a nurse?" he asked the other woman.

She shook her head and smiled.  "No, I just had so many damn fools drop on my doorstep with frostbite and hypothermia that I got real good at treating it.  My name's Beth.  That there's my little girl, Amber."

She motioned to a small child, probably three or four years old, who was playing with her doll on a braided rug.  Kurt blinked.  Was he still seeing things?  The girl was distinctly Asian, while Beth was as white as one could possibly get.  Perhaps Amber was adopted?

"Kurt, can you feel your fingers and toes?" Ororo asked.

Kurt focused on that instead, moving his extremities, then his limbs, very slowly.  The reflective blanket crackled as he moved.  He lifted his head a little.

"I can even feel my tail," he said, grinning.  "Maybe I escaped frostbite?"

"Maybe you're lucky to be alive," Ororo told him, her words sharp.  "In heaven's name, Kurt, what happened?  Why did you take off like that?"

Kurt sighed and lowered his head back to the cot.  "I don't know."

Before Ororo could question further, the outside door opened.  Beth stood up and gasped, a hand to her mouth, as Logan walked in, along with the man they'd rescued earlier.  He was walking with Logan's help, but just barely.

"TOSHI!" Beth screamed.

She ran to him and held on.  Toshiro returned the hug.  They both began to shake.  Amber was there, wrapped around both of their legs, screaming "daddy" over and over.  Beth was sobbing something about how she was so scared, that she thought he was dead, that he was gone for days.  For his part, Toshiro held onto her with the strength of a desperate man, tears rolling down his cheeks.

"Faithless woman," he choked, trying to smile.  "I am gone for just two days, and you already bring another man into the house."

"When you send up a flare, darlin', you don't fool around," Logan said quietly as he moved around to Ororo.  "Didja really need _two_ lightning bolts?"

Ororo's jaw dropped.  She pointed at Toshiro and Beth.  "You mean...he..._this_ is where he lived?"

"Everything just kind of lead up to the little camouflaged house in the big woods, didn't it?" Logan asked in response.  "Now you know why I don't believe in coincidence."  He knelt until he was eye-level with Ororo and looked down at Kurt.  "Hey, elf, how ya doing?"

Kurt smiled.  "Awful.  Thank you for asking."

"Either one of you know about the dead battle-axe a mile or so back?"

Ororo looked pained.  "I heard what sounded like a gun battle somewhere in the vicinity before I found Kurt.  Another victim?"

"Not quite.  She was one of the scents I got off of the first guy we found.  She sure as hell wasn't innocent.  Toshi said he recognized her.  Some Christ Identity KKK nutcase called Clara Miles.  The way he talked, if she was here, she wasn't up to any good."

"I'm losing track of the coincidences," Kurt mumbled.  "Maybe we should make a flow chart."

"Shotgun blast tore off part of her shoulder," Logan went on.  "Been dead for a good two hours."

"I wonder why didn't I see her as I came in?" Ororo mused, somewhat detached.

"Your tracks come in the other way, darlin'.  You came in from the east, she went south.  Me and Toshiro came up from the south, so we ran into her."

He looked back at Toshiro.  The man seemed to have calmed Beth down a little bit.  She was allowing him to walk, with her help, and he was moving towards the group.  He looked down at Kurt, calm but quizzical.

"So you are the 'wild man' responsible for saving my life," he said, his voice soft with reverence.

Kurt looked over at Logan, confused.  Logan shrugged and smiled in that way that told Kurt he just might have had something to do with Toshiro's declaration.

"Please forgive me," Toshiro went on.  "I would bow to give you the respect you deserve, but that may not be wise in my condition.  I owe you a great debt of honor, Mister Wagner.  You are forever welcome in this house."

Little Amber pulled at her father's pants.  When he looked down at her, she pointed to Kurt and said, "And he gots a _tail_, too!"

                *              *              *              *              *                              

Though there were many unanswered questions, the night was late, and they had two patients to tend to.  Toshiro was in almost as rough condition as Kurt, though his was from beating rather than hypothermia.  Despite their protestations to the contrary, the two were deemed "unfit for conversation", fed soup and cornbread, and put straight to bed.  In Kurt's case, he got the guest room, the bed of which was much more roomy and comfortable than the cot.  It was a simple, homey place.  A folk-art cross made of burnt matchsticks hung above the headboard, and the quilts Kurt pulled up to his neck had been stitched by hand.  Everything had a warm, rustic feel.  Sleep came easily.

When Kurt drifted back to awareness, he felt light fingertips on his tail.  Sometime during sleep, his tail must have worked its way out from under the mound of blankets, because someone was running their little hands along the spade.  He couldn't help but sigh, smile, and shake his head.  He knew who it had to be.  He either fascinated or terrified young children; there was never an in-between.  But before he could turn over, or pull the tail from his "captor's" grasp, he heard the flick of a switch, saw light shine through his eyelids, and heard someone gasp in shock.

"Amber!" Beth's voice scolded.  "You don't do that!"

Kurt rolled over onto his back, taking the opportunity to gently pull his tail from Amber's hands.  Amber glanced down at the tail as it retracted, then turned to her flustered and blushing mother.

"Marmalade don't mind when I pet _her_ tail," she objected.

Beth was carrying a tray of food, which she set on a nearby table.  "Marmalade's a cat!  You don't go around strokin'...a man's...appendage!"

She blushed even more vividly, all too aware of the turn her words unintentionally took.  Kurt slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position against the headboard, his tail disappearing under the covers.  Amber looked back at Kurt glumly.

"I'm sorry Mister Vargnur," she said.

"That's all right," he said.  He wagged a finger in front of her face.  "But the next time, you must ask permission, yes?  I am not a cat."

She looked up brightly and opened her mouth, but her mother stopped her.  "No, you can _not_ pet his tail right now!  Give the man time to wake up and get dressed, child!  Now shoo!"

Amber hunched her shoulders and exited the room, wiggling past Logan as he entered the doorway.  Beth was still blushing.

"I'm so sorry, sir," she apologized.  "I hope she didn't cause you no trouble."

Kurt gestured that he was unconcerned.  "The tip of my tail is not so sensitive as that.  She may as well have been holding my hand.  There was no harm or embarrassment."

Beth let out an explosive sigh of relief, much to Logan's amusement.  

Logan took a chair and sat.  "Eat up, Kurt.  We got a little meeting downstairs, if you're feeling up to it."

Kurt nodded.  "I will be."

Truth be told, even after eating, he didn't feel "up to it".  Most everything still ached, and he was considerably weakened from his experience, but he knew this wasn't a social meeting.  Under Logan's watchful eye, he walked down the hallway, down a flight of stairs, and into the den.  Their host family, and Ororo, waited there.  Ororo seemed glad to see him, but she was nervous, her eyes flicking from corner to corner.  Not one room that Kurt had seen was equipped with windows, including the den.  This must be giving the poor woman fits.

Kurt perched on the edge of the sofa and, as was his habit, rested his arms loosely over his knees.  "I imagine I owe you an explanation."

"Do you have one?" Ororo asked, more concerned than accusing.

Kurt shrugged and looked down.  "No.  I'm still trying to sort things out."

"Well, while you're sorting things out, I think the rest of us should put our heads together.  As you said, there are too many coincidences here."

Toshiro spoke up.  He was black and blue from his beating, but the swelling had gone down considerably on his face.

"I do not remember being captured, but from your descriptions--" he looked to Logan "--and from the body we found last night, I have no doubt as to their identity."

Beth winced a little.  "Honey, this ain't no good time for puns."

"I did not mean it that way, but it's true.  Logan described your uncle's cane too well for there to be any doubts."

Beth turned red, her eyes burning with anger.  "Uncle Fred got his old Klan buddies to beat up on you?"

Toshiro nodded.

"Sounds like you and your uncle aren't on good terms, there," Logan commented.

"My Uncle Fred is a bitter, hateful, cross-burning, twisted old man!" she snapped.  "When he found out I was marryin' Toshi he did everything to sabotage it!  He made threatenin' phone calls, left nasty letters--"

Toshiro put a hand on his wife's arm and she stopped in mid-rant.

"Suffice to say," Toshiro finished calmly, "after he came at my wife and daughter last year, he is not allowed anywhere within 500 feet of us, according to the restraining order.  Nor is he allowed anywhere on our property.  The woman we found last night was his girlfriend.  Apparently, she wanted to prove her love to him."

"Is that why this place is so well camouflaged?" Ororo asked.  "I would not have thought it a house.  It looks more like part of the hill."

Toshiro's voice was soft.  "Originally, it was just to be in harmony with our surroundings.  Now it is a safehouse.  Few know of its location.  Clara must have been told where to look by her...lover."

"I'm not nearly as worried about those guys as I am about the ringleader," Logan told him.  "That bastard could teleport, and he was strong enough to fight off Kurt."

Kurt looked down and away at Logan's statement.

"You know, that still doesn't make sense to me," Ororo commented.  "What's a black man doing leading a bunch of Klansmen?"

Logan stared at her.  "Are you kiddin' me?  He was so white he blended in with the snow!"

Ororo shook her head slowly, her eyes never leaving Logan's.  "Logan...the man I saw was about seven feet tall, very, _very_ dark, with African style robes and grooming.  I thought he was Tutsi.  What did you see?"

Logan caught on quickly.  "About the same height, Nordic, long hair.  Real soft-looking face, white robes.  We all saw something different, didn't we?"

They both looked back at Kurt, who was scowling at the floor.  After a moment's hesitation, he answered their unspoken question, his tone cryptic and harsh.

"I did not see that."

"What _did_ you see?" Ororo asked.

He raised his head and regarded her with an air of barely contained anger.  "I do not remember precisely, but I know I did not see what you described."

Ororo ran through numerous scenarios in her mind.  A telepath illusionist?  With sonic powers and group teleportation?  Whoever this was, he was incredibly powerful.  But just what did he expect to accomplish by aligning himself with a small, isolated group of aging racists?  Someone like Magneto would have eliminated such people on sight, rather than use them.  They would just as soon turn on a mutant as anyone else.

And why did he enrage Kurt so?  Was he deliberately egging him on?  He certainly seemed happy to drown him in the river the evening before.

Logan turned to Ororo.  "You called the Prof already?"

Ororo nodded, still watching Kurt.  Kurt had returned to glaring at the floor, eyes narrowed as if trying very hard to remember something.

"I did that last night with the house phone," she said.  "I appraised him of the situation.  He said he'd call me if he found anything.  I haven't heard from him since."

Logan nodded, remembering how difficult it was to track Kurt the first time.  Teleporters must have been hell on Charlie's brain.  He glanced at Toshiro and Beth, to see how they were taking this.  Unlike the Drakes, they were handling it all pretty well.  They were understandably nervous, but they were doing their best to suppress it.  In fact, Beth especially seemed to feel guilty about being nervous at all.  Still, how much more should they say in front of them?

"Your uncle and his cronies," Logan spoke up.  "Where do they meet?"

"Used to meet at the old Identity church thirty miles out," Beth answered.  "But the police have been stakin' it out all week.  Even got a search warrant and went in.  Sheriff Wilson said the place was stripped bare, like it ain't been lived in for months.  Ain't no cars there, and ain't no one gone in or out all this time."

Ororo had a bad feeling about this.  "This is going to sound odd, but have the stakeouts been having equipment failures?  Radios, computers, anything electronic?"

Toshiro and Beth looked at each other in surprise.

"How'd you guess?" Beth asked in return.

Logan squelched the urge to swear in front of the child.  He stood up suddenly and started to pace.

Ororo sighed.  "The ringleader can teleport a large amount of people.  When he did it in front of us, he caused a disturbance that shorted out our electronics."

"Still need that flow chart, Kurt?" Logan asked loudly as he paced.

Kurt, still glaring at the floor, intoned, "No."

"Are you saying...that this man is a mutant?" Toshiro asked, disbelieving.  "Leading the _Klan_?"

"Have you heard what the Klan _says_ about mutants?" Beth added.  "They'd drive a stake through his heart!  They'd never let him near the church, let alone lead!"

"These Klansmen," Kurt said.  "They usually think themselves religious, yes?"

All fell silent.  Logan, still pacing, gave a bitter laugh, shaking his head.

"You think he might be impersonating an angel or something?" he asked Kurt.

"Fanatics are easy to manipulate, so long as you feed them what they want to hear," Ororo answered for him.  "If he came in and praised them, 'blessed' their efforts, made it easy to kill without detection...."

"They would see him as validation of their blasphemies," Kurt snarled through clenched teeth.  "That's what he's doing.  That has to be what he's doing."  

"But...if he can really teleport," Toshiro said, "how can he be caught?"

"Trust me," Kurt spat.  "It can be done."  He looked up at Logan without raising his head.  "When do we go?"

"You feelin' up to it?" Logan asked back.  "You've only had fifteen hours of rest."

"Just try to stop me, Logan."

To be concluded….


	5. War

**Editor's Note**:  As with part 3, BlueFooted did an illustration for this part.  And, again, she did a _fantastic_ job of capturing the mood.  And, as with part 3, the illustration link is at the bottom, with spaces between everything.

Corruption, part 5 

Logan called the professor before they left that afternoon.  To his chagrin, he got Scott on the other end of the line.  Apparently, the professor had been using Cerebro for hours, and had yet to able to locate anything even close to what he, Kurt, and Ororo saw.  However, he _had_ found something else, and almost as interesting.  At the coordinates of the Identity church was a null spot.  At first, so Scott said, Xavier didn't catch it.  Only after going back over the area in more detail did he see it.  Someone was hiding there.  That was all the verification they needed.

The Jesus Christ of Christ Identity church had been built into the hillside, in a similar manner as Beth and Toshiro's home.  It seemed to be a popular way to build in this area.  Storm, watching through binoculars from several hundred feet away, felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.  She would be going underground again.  Despite the warmth of the previous home, it had unnerved her to be in such a place.  This so-called church, with its deceptive, old-time facade and faux steeple, made her feel even worse.  She had no idea what to expect, but she doubted it was truly deserted.  Someone who could have the three of them seeing a completely different being could make the police see whatever he wanted as well.

"You gonna be O.K. in there, darlin'?" Logan asked her quietly.  "Maybe you should stay out as backup while Kurt and I go in."

"Believe it or not, Logan, I'm seriously considering your offer," Storm replied, lowering the binoculars.

"The place is unholy," Kurt said beside them.  "You should not be in there unless there is no choice."

"Can you get by the stakeout?" Storm asked.

Logan snorted.  "Piece of cake."

"I should be able to appear behind the steeple without being seen," Kurt added.  "There is only one police car there.  They must have the rest out on patrols."

His voice was still strained.  Ever since the discussion earlier, he had been tense.  Storm knew that such hate groups, especially those Nazi-oriented, were illegal in Germany.  Seeing them in operation, with government acquiescence, must have been difficult for Kurt to accept.

"Just you remember the plan, elf," Logan warned.  "We see any victims, they come out first.  Let me take the lead guy hand to hand.  Don't go off like you did yesterday."

Kurt took a long, steady breath and exhaled.  "I will try."

Logan nodded and took off down the slope, quickly disappearing in the underbrush.  Kurt knew better than to try and teleport with Logan.  He was just too heavy to comfortably travel with, and he didn't need the strain right now.  Still, it was an effort to stay put.  He kept telling himself that he had to wait, had to give Logan time to get there.  He couldn't go alone.  Not again.

_You nearly died yesterday_, he reminded himself.  _Don't make the same mistakes._

Without warning, he was back in Stryker's tiled lab again.  Several men were fighting to strap him to a table.  It was not the first time they had done this, and Kurt knew the results would be painful if they won.  Something snapped within him.  He was no longer afraid.  He was angry, even enraged.  He bit one of them, sinking his fangs to the man's bone.  He punched another one, who tumbled back against the wall.  He wrapped his tail around the neck of a third and used it him as leverage as kicked the others away.  He sprang off the table and bolted for the door.  For freedom.

"Kurt?" Ororo asked softly.

Kurt snapped to face her, and she pointed at his tail.  He looked back and realized that it was twisting into knots again.  This time, he did not bother to release the tension.

"Is it time?" he asked her.

She looked at her watch, borrowed from their hosts.  "Almost--"

Before she had finished the second syllable, Nightcrawler was gone.

Logan smelled the faint whiff of sulfur and looked up. Nightcrawler was a little early.  He'd have to stop jumping his cue like that.  At least he was waiting for Logan to get to the west side of the church facade before he did anything.  Nightcrawler clung to the base of the steeple, looking back and forth quickly with agitation.  Logan whistled softly.  Nightcrawler spun his direction, then suddenly appeared right next to him.  Jumpy, sweating, stressed, clenching and unclenching his fists.  Logan had never seen the elf so ready, so willing, for a fight.

Without a word, Logan popped his claws and stuck them into the jutting facade of the building.  A few swipes, and the wood and brick yielded a new opening.  Nightcrawler teleported into the foyer as Logan stepped through the hole.  Nightcrawler inhaled sharply as he beheld the darkened hall in front of him, lit only by the light streaming in through Logan's entry.  Three large swastika tapestries graced the walls; one left, one right, one far ahead.  Even worse, there was a cross in front of that swastika at the far end of the hall, draped with a garland of white silk flowers.  Nightcrawler crossed himself three times, rosary in hand, as Logan came in behind him.

"So much for deserted," Logan mumbled.

Nightcrawler's fists clenched, his voice a strangled, shaking whisper.  "This is _sacrilege!_  They may as well plant the cross in _filth_ as to have it in front of the swastika!"

His body was starting to tremble, his tail lashing violently.  His breath came fast and through clenched teeth, perilously close to hyperventilation.  He was losing it.  The rage was about to be released, and he couldn't stop it.  The enemy was here.

"Hold on," Logan hissed into his ear.  "I don't know what he's doing to you, but fight it."

Nightcrawler shook his head violently, snarling through clenched teeth.  "I can't, Logan.  _I can't!"_

He teleported to the far wall, on top of the hated tapestry, and tore it down as he leapt to the floor.  As Logan ran to catch up, he saw a door previously hidden behind the cloth.  How did the elf know it was there?  Nightcrawler jumped up, grabbed the doorframe, and kicked the door down with both feet as he sprang in.  With a burst of light, he instantly flew back out, snapped the draped cross at its base, and crashed through two rows of pews before disappearing behind a third.  

The tall man, radiating an unearthly light, stepped through the doorway, the top of his head just brushing the frame.  Logan felt his muscles start to twitch.  The man felt like sandpaper on every open nerve.  His scent brought forth memories of Stryker's antiseptic labs, of Bosnian death camps, of killing fields and innocent blood.  That beautiful, placid facade was just that.  

Logan finally understood what was driving Nightcrawler insane.  There were no other words for what he felt.  This man, this _thing_, was pure evil.  Logan then did the sensible thing.  He screamed and leapt.

Officer Manny knew something was up when he heard a series of loud bangs from inside the church.  It sounded like wood splintering, as if chairs or tables were being smashed.  It had to be the pews; there was nothing else inside.  As he was lifting his radio to his lips, he heard someone screaming and yelling from inside, and more things breaking.

"Dispatch, this is 325," he called, craning his head for a better view out of his windshield.  "We've got activity in the Identity church.  Sounds like one helluva fight--"

A deafening thunderclap and lightning bolt came from literally out of the blue.  Suddenly the steeple was in splinters.  Manny instantly revised his opinion.  It couldn't have been lightning; the trees around the church would have taken the brunt first.  It must have been a bomb.  A second later, another explosion tore a large hole in the top of the facade.  Inside, Officer Manny saw flashes of light and heard gunshots.

"Jesus Christ on a crutch!" he yelled.  "Dispatch, I'm seeing explosions!  I'm hearing gunfire and I think I'm seeing laser scope dots!  Half the damn church is gone!"

"325, this is dispatch, retreat to a safe distance," a voice calmly stated from the radio.  "Drop back one mile to the roadblock.  You are too close to the action.  BATF is being advised of your position right now."

Officer Manny started his car as yet another explosion tore off more of the church facade.  "Damn straight I'm gettin' out of here!  325 out and _gone!"_

He turned around as fast as he dared on the snowy road, then made his way back down the hill with all speed.  He never saw Storm let loose one more lightning bolt, ripping away what was left of the facade, then run into the gaping maw behind.

The main hall of the Jesus Christ of Christ Identity church was an absolute war zone.  On one side, Logan was tearing into the tall man.  On the other side was the tall man himself and ten "disciples", all armed with rifles, all wearing the armbands of their faith: a cross with a drop of blood in the center.  The disciples were kneeling behind the pews, using them for cover, as they pumped round after round in Logan's direction, apparently heedless of their leader.  Logan was cutting into the man full force, but he couldn't seem to draw blood.  The robes were torn, but there were no wounds, from bullets or claws.

The tall man, their false "angel", no doubt, gave Logan an open-handed blow to the chest.  It lifted him off his feet, sending him flying over the pews and into the wall, tearing down an oversized swastika tapestry on top of him. The disciples turned their guns on the downed figure trying to get out from under the cloth.

Storm's fingers trembled.  She'd already pulled down some serious lightning just to get into here.  Worse, the underground room made her feel so trapped that her heart was pounding, and the tall man....  He turned his gaze to her and she felt a fist close around that frantically beating heart.  She felt trapped like a rabbit in a snare.  The walls were closing in.  Frantic desperation fed into frantic need, and she pulled another bolt from the sky.  It hit the tall man head on, staggering him.  Storm could draw breath again, but her respite was all too brief.  The tall man was getting up, and he was smiling.

The Klansmen were pumping round after round into Logan when something else got in their way.  A blur of motion, the stench of brimstone, and Nightcrawler was everywhere at once, disappearing and reappearing so fast there seemed to be twenty of him.  Logan's attackers may have been good shots, but they were all middle-aged at best and out of shape.  It took only a few seconds to dispatch them.  Logan ripped out of the blood-stained tapestry, dozens of holes in his shirt and pants, to see Nightcrawler drop the last man in the bunch.  A jagged fork of lightning lit the hall.  Both men turned to see Storm, shaking with exhaustion and fear, putting all she had into stopping the tall man as he moved her way.  Her face was turning red.  One of her hands gripped her throat, the other her chest.  It looked like she couldn't breathe.

Nightcrawler teleported again, this time onto the back of the tall man, and clung fast.  He grabbed him around the neck in a chokehold, his legs and tail curling around his enemy's chest.  Storm dropped behind a remaining pew, gasping for air.  The tall man gave a feral snarl and reached around to grab Nightcrawler by his shirt, when suddenly he screamed, arching his back in pain.  The dreadful sound was hard enough to bear when outside.  In the confined space, it was deafening, bringing Logan to his knees.  As he looked up, hands over his ears, he saw wisps of smoke coming up from the side of the tall man's face.  Then he saw Nightcrawler go flying again, but this time he seemed to be ready for it, absorbing the force as he bounced off the walls and into the rafters.

The tall man was shaking with rage, eyes literally aflame.  From those eyes, something like twin lasers shot out, following Nightcrawler as he leapt from rafter to rafter.  _How many powers did this man have?_

Storm dragged herself down the main aisle, trying to keep a low profile as she recovered her strength.  Logan rushed in and stabbed the tall man with both sets of claws.  This time the foe winced in pain, his eyebeams shutting down.  This close, Logan could see an odd series of black lines burned into the tall man's ear.

The tall man gestured and flung Logan away again.  By then there wasn't a solid pew left except for the rear row.  The tall man was bleeding slightly from his six new wounds.  It was easy to see, now that he had almost nothing left to cover him above the waist.  Something fell down on Logan from up above, and he slashed it into ribbons before he realized what it was; Kurt's flannel shirt.

On an instinctive level, Nightcrawler had always known what to do.  It was why he grappled with the being instead of punching or kicking.  It wasn't until he accidentally brushed his cheek against the man's ear that he realized what was truly expected of him.  And so, to that end, when he teleported again, he left his shirt behind.  Once more he appeared on the tall man's back and clung fast, but this time he grabbed him completely around the chest and buried his face in his neck.  The being screamed and twisted in agony, smoke rising from his entire body.

Storm watched the attack which something between horror and awe as she pushed herself up on her arms and legs.  Logan was rushing in again.

"Logan!" Storm shouted.  "Make sure he can't get Kurt off of him!"

"Already ahead of ya, Storm," he muttered as he slashed down.

He should have taken the tall man's right arm clean off.  Instead, his claws passed through, ghostlike, for most of the way before connecting with muscle and blood.  The man's arm hung down, disabled and bleeding profusely.  It wasn't a kill, but it was better than he'd been able to do before.  The tall man continued to howl, flailing around with his other arm in his attempts to tear Nightcrawler off.  He leapt back and slammed Nightcrawler between himself and the wall.  Nightcrawler lost his grip, his air, and nearly his consciousness.  He fell.  The tall man spun away, and both Logan and Storm could clearly see the lines of Nightcrawler's Enochian symbols burned into his back, neck, and around his chest.  His skin seemed to crawl, twitching everywhere as if there were thousands of insects running around just underneath.  His eyes had turned jet, pupilless black, as if they'd been gouged out and replaced by an empty void.  His red blood was darkening to something more like reddish-black ink.

He wasn't a mutant.  The evidence pointed...no, _screamed_...to a very different, more chilling conclusion, one that Logan immediately refused the second it entered his mind.  He came after the tall man again.  The tall man blocked his arms with skill that he had not shown before.

_No more telekinesis, huh?_ Logan thought.  _Getting tired?  Maybe losing too much blood?_

As both of the tall man's arms were preoccupied with fending Logan off, Logan was taken utterly by surprise when another two arms picked him up by his wrists.  In seconds, he was being restrained by his wrists and his ankles, by the tall man's two sets of inhumanly long arms.  His grip bit into Logan's flesh, as if he had talons instead of nails.

Suddenly Nightcrawler was there again, this time latched onto the tall man's chest.  Another howl, and Logan was dropped to the ground.

"Kurt!" Storm shouted, praying she'd be heard.  "I need a clear shot!"

Kurt obligingly teleported away, and Logan dove to the side, as Storm called a lightning bolt into the hall.  It hit the foe in his chest, as before, but he did not rise nearly so fast this time.  More Enochian symbols smoked on his chest.  The charred lines seemed to be bleeding gold glitter.  His skin became brittle and started to flake away, revealing something sickly red underneath.  It wasn't muscle.  

It was clear that the more symbols Nightcrawler burned into their foe, the more effect Storm and Logan's attacks had.  The trio got into a rhythm of battle.  Nightcrawler teleported in, grabbed just long enough to imprint his symbols, then teleported away.  Logan ran by, taking a chunk out of the tall man.  Storm called in another bolt.  Nightcrawler popped in again.  They never gave their enemy a chance to focus on one of them at a time.  The tall man's shape twisted into something foul and inhuman.  The flaking skin exploded off of him, igniting whatever it touched.  The final shape was something asymmetrical, the "skin" plated haphazardly with red chitin.  The blood was black as tar.  Four eyes, like an insect's.  A tail like a dinosaur's.  Talons.  Some hands had six fingers, some only two, like pinschers.  Kurt's symbols were everywhere, branded in as if by hot irons, and smoking.  

The hall was on fire.  Burning beams tumbled down, revealing rock above.  The carpet burned and melted, releasing toxic fumes.  Storm was utterly exhausted.  The last lightning bolt took everything she had.  She laid there, coughing weakly, as the smoke filled up the ill-ventilated hall.  She felt Nightcrawler's distinctive grip as he held her close, felt a wrenching sensation, and inhaled cold, sweet air once again, the sounds of the fire much farther away.

Kurt knelt down and sat her up.  He tenderly cupped her face in his hands.  "Are you all right?"

She opened her eyes and looked back into the gentle, concerned face she knew so well.  All of his scars glistened gold against his indigo skin, a gloriously beautiful combination.  She coughed and nodded, her throat too raw to speak.  He nodded, lightly kissed her forehead, and leaned her against a tree.

"Wait here."

He was gone.  Seconds later, Logan ran up.

"Where's Kurt?" he asked, looking around.

Storm blinked in confusion.  "You mean...he didn't go back for you?"

The inside of the hall was alight.  That which had been the tall man was crawling back to the inner sanctum, where the flames had not yet reached.  It still had a chance to recover.  The branding had suppressed its power, but it still had a chance.  Let the rest of the place come crashing down outside.  Let it be buried under the rubble.  It might take months, it might take years, but the hated symbols would fade.  It would heal.

It made his way into the sanctum, half-crawling, half-slithering, and looked directly at a pair of wrapped, two-toed feet.  It lifted its head to look up at man that had defiled its sanctum, the man that had sniffed it out wherever it tried to go.  The anathema symbols glowed gold on his chest, arms, and face.  Even his eyes glowed.  His face was placid, his movements slow and graceful, as he knelt down.  Hated words fell from his lips as he extended his right arm over its misshapen back.  Horribly weakened as it was, the words paralyzed with pain.  

For Kurt, every emotion was swept away by calm determination.  It was all so clear, now.  Everything lead up to this moment.  His family taught him love.  Stryker taught him to fight and kill.  The X-men taught him teamwork.  Even the nightmares, the flashbacks;  it all had its place.  It all had a purpose.

_How much hate did these fools have in their hearts to be able to summon one such as you?_ he thought, looking at the immobilized enemy.  _How twisted could they be to pray for your arrival and believe you to be holy?_

He clenched his fist around his rosary and cocked his arm back, still reciting prayers in his native tongue.

_Logan might not consciously recognize you for what you are.  He would not understand what needed to be done.  Storm is too weak to finish you off.  It's all up to me._

On the final phrase of his prayer, he punched clear through the fallen angel's heart.          

A long gout of flame lashed out from the hole in the mountain that had been an Identity meeting hall.  It subsided after two full seconds, melting snow for yards in any direction.  It was only by chance that no trees were in the path of the blast.  Without the snow, the other nearby pines would surely have caught fire.  As it was, they were scorched black, sap crystallized into something rock hard.  Before Logan and Ororo could register the implications, Kurt appeared beside them.  His scars were no longer gold.

"You've got one hell of a flare for the dramatic," Logan said.

Kurt smiled and shrugged.  "It comes with the territory."

"Is it gone?" Ororo coughed, standing up.  "I mean...really gone?"

Kurt glanced down at his right hand, still balled into a fist.  "Yes.  Forever."

"You two mind telling me just what that was in there?" Logan asked.

Ororo and Kurt looked at him as if he was insane, incomprehensible, or just plain stupid.  Sirens sounded down the road, drawing closer.  

"Tell me later," Logan decided.  "Let's just high-tail it out of here before the feds arrive."

Logan led the way, with Kurt walking in his footsteps to avoid leaving his distinctive tracks.  Ororo leaned on Kurt for support.

"I'm almost glad you need the help," he whispered to her, something dancing behind his eyes.

"Are you flirting?" she asked, smiling weakly.

He shivered.  "No, I'm freezing.  I seem to have a bad track record with cold.  Maybe next time we do this, we can convince Logan of the virtues of Fiji."

**_Finis_**

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http: //www. angelfire. com/ art2/ bluefooted/ images/ corr4. jpg


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